Big Issues

American Grotesque

Insane birthers and Glenn Beck-worshipping tea-partiers, proud racists and gun-toting antigovernment loons—they're all here, and they're all angry about something. John Jeremiah Sullivan goes deep into the bowels of the great American Rage Machine on a patriotic quest for common ground with his countrymen

The first American Revolution was fought over socialism, in 1609. This is never mentioned. Even before slavery and the Indian genocides, it's a founding schism.

In that year, a ship called the Sea Venture wrecked off the coast of Bermuda. She'd been on her way to relieve the struggling infant Jamestown colony in Virginia. So the ship hadn't even reached here yet—that's how early this was.

Among the passengers were several of separatist tendencies, the Brownists and Familists, whose ideas about society and Christianity had been shaped by the radical sectarian movements that rose up before the English Civil War. These were the parents, then, of the Levelers, Diggers, and Quakers (the people you read about in Christopher Hill's 1972 classic, The World Turned Upside Down). Most of those movements contained at least some communitarian element.

The passengers made it ashore and right away set to work building another ship.

Some of them did. The others said, What are we doing? Why are we killing ourselves to get to Jamestown, where they'll put us to work as colonial drones until we starve or get eaten by heathens, when we have everything we need on this island? Fresh fruit, seafood, plenty of space. Let us live here in common, worshipping God and sharing the bounty of the earth, and no man shall be master to any other.

Nor was there was any indigenous population in Bermuda. It was terra pura, pure soil.

What happened? The ones who intended to go to Jamestown tried to imprison, banish, and execute the ones who wanted to stay. The latter ran off into the forest.

The governor killed one of their leaders, a man named Henry Paine, to set an example. He wanted to hang him, but Paine begged to be shot, as more befitting a gentleman. His last recorded words were "The governor can kiss my arse." That's literally what he said.

In the end, almost everyone went to Jamestown and perished.

Today is September 12, 2009. We are marching.

Actually, at this moment we are massing around a parade float that will guide us from Freedom Plaza to the steps of the Capitol building.

You rarely see a lone parade float, one that's not in a line with others. It gives this thing the look of a ship on a sea of people. The sea is us. (In a different mood it might look like a hayride wagon gone wrong and run into a mob.)

A woman calls to us from the wagon-ship. She's about 60; we don't see her well. She has a microphone, but the sound system it's connected to can't compete with this level of crowd noise, so we don't hear much. Another day, this would be annoying. Today it's thrilling. We're too many even for ourselves, and more are coming. As many of the signs say, silent majority no more.

The woman introduces someone; she says we may have seen him on the Internet. In the past week or so, he's become a YouTube sensation. He recorded himself at home with his Webcam, just talking, speaking from his heart about what he feels is happening to his nation, the trouble it's headed toward if good people don't make a stand. He's a brown-haired man in his thirties. In the video, he said something, used a phrase that resonated. If you've seen it, you know the phrase; some of us haven't seen it and can't hear well enough to catch the phrase today, but we feel the tone. Something like: "I want my America back." Or, "What happened to my America?" Another person sings an original folk song over the crackling speaker.

A guy behind me is holding an ingenious sign he's made. He's cut out the mouth from a giant cardboard poster of Nancy Pelosi's face, creating a hole, a gaping maw, and attached a bag to the back of it, like a corn hole at the fair. He's handing out Lipton tea bags to people and urging them to "tea-bag Nancy Pelosi." People are doing it and laughing, even ladies. Pelosi, with her giant crazy eyes, gulps the tea bags eagerly.

It's only fair. Liberals made fun of us because, at first, some of us didn't know what "tea-bagging" meant—that it meant dipping your testicles into a woman's or, if you lean that way, another fella's open mouth—and a few of us, the older ones, may have referred to ourselves for a brief span as "tea-baggers," in ignorance and in innocence. Now we're turning the joke back on them. No one who has any sense of humor gets hurt.

Standing on a garbage can and commanding a lot of attention is a strange figure. A small man or woman—you can't see enough of its body to tell—holds a handmade sign that reads YES I AM. The creature wears an Obama mask. When people holler "Obama!" it looks in their direction and does a little shuffle. Atop the Obama mask sits a fake gold crown. Obama thinks he's a king! (Is that what YES I AM means? Yes, I am a king?) The king has on a bright purple pimp's coat with faux-leopard-skin trim. An African king? It looks like something you'd see and turn away from in a southern antiques shop. We do turn away, after taking a pic.

You can't move sideways as easily as you could a minute ago. The march is moving. To the Capitol!